WRITER'S BLOC

America a fractured mess, thanks to progressives?

Blogger and researcher Jim Fletcher has worked in the book publishing industry for 15 years, and is now director of the apologetics group Prophecy Matters. His new book, "Truth Wins," provides important analysis of Rob Bell and his Emergent friends.

In some sense, investigative writer Jack Cashill is an irascible rascal, combing through information most of us don’t have time for (in truth, he’s just a lot better at it than the rest of us!). His books are some of the most informative around concerning what’s really going on behind the window dressing that the régime in Washington rolls out every day.

“Scarlet Letters” is red meat for those of us who are aware in some sense that America has become a fractured, politicized, partisan mess … because the left wants it that way. Chaos and dissension drive those with a left-leaning worldview, because at its root, they don’t like people being free to live as they see fit. If one doesn’t conform to the rantings of Marx, then by golly, we’ll put you away! Such is life in 21st century America.

Cashill opens with a frightening story of out-of-control gays who descend on a sleepy Indiana town, specifically a pizzeria that would in fact exercise its right not to serve a gay wedding. What follows sounds like something out of an old horror film with torches winding their way up a winding mountain at midnight.

You see, it’s not that the left wants equal time. The left wants all the time. All of it. And if you don’t play ball, they won’t kick you out of the game. They’ll kick you, for real, take away your livelihood, and make sure you are used as an example for anyone else who might want to exercise their free conscience.

“Scarlet Letters” reads like a weird travelogue, but one that cites examples of leftist ideology run amok. From the ACLU to Mark Zuckerberg, liberals and leftists want you to bend to their will. And if you don’t, there’ll be hell to pay.

Take, for example, the passion of Whittaker Chambers. As Cashill explains, Chambers was attracted to the idea that man alone would decide his destiny, with no need for God:

Communists, however, had no monopoly on the vision. As Chambers saw it, leftists of various stripes – “socialists, liberals, fellow travelers, unclassified progressives and men of good will” – shared the conviction that human reason would displace “God” as the “creative intelligence of the world.

This mindset, left unchecked, eventually demands conformity from all. It has taken a long time, perhaps almost since the founding of the country, but the Enlightenment thinkers have finally arrived at the moment when Chambers’ worldview is pressing down on regular Americans, who find themselves increasingly ogled by the state for not playing, say, Obama Ball.

In his singular style, Cashill relates how leftists demand total conformity. In an interview of fellow atheist Sam Harris, TV host Bill Maher lambasted Harris for having the temerity to question whether legitimate criticism of Islam has a place in the public dialogue. This unseemly example is but one noted in “Scarlet Letters,” and while the examples in the book are truly chilling and infuriating, the reader finds himself unable to put the book down. It reads like some sequel of “1984.”

Cashill is at his best when examining the motives of leftists. He recounts in fascinating fashion the liberal Michael Crichton, whose credentials allowed him to do the unthinkable one evening in San Francisco, when he addressed the Commonwealth Club. Crichton detailed for his audience how it was they and not so much religious fundamentalists (read: Christians) who clung to faith in their worldviews, even when new facts supplanted previously held ideas.

Skewering cherished dogma such as the fact that no evidence exists that DDT kills birds or causes cancer, Crichton took more deliberate aim at his audience of environmentalists:

Another article of faith that Crichton attacked that fateful night in San Francisco was the dogma that the miracle chemical DDT caused cancer and, worse, killed birds. One very determined woman, Rachel Carson by name, introduced this idea in her influential 1962 best seller, Silent Spring.

All in all, “Scarlet Letters” is one of the most fascinating books you’ll ever read about the folly of much of the ideology that drives the left, and more importantly, how that fanatical lunacy harms people and whole societies. You’ll find “Scarlet Letters” invaluable for confronting the wicked claptrap fed university students and others who don’t know better than to question the dogma they are spoon-fed.

With this book, Jack Cashill indelibly stamps “D” for Delusional on his subject.